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European BACS Market 2019 - 2024

On 18 March 2020, BSRIA’s Worldwide Market Intelligence published updates to its Building Automation Controls (BACS) studies for four key Western European Markets: Germany, Spain, the Netherlands and Belgium. The studies confirm that, while each market has some special characteristics, there are some important common trends.

As of February 2020, BSRIA was forecasting strong growth in all four markets, though unfolding events, including the coronavirus, could have an adverse impact. In the period 2019- 2024 the forecast ranges from 3.1% to 4.8% CAGR depending on the country. The strongest growth is forecast for Belgium and Spain, reflecting in part the economic recovery after a difficult period in the latter.

The effects of economic conditions are currently open to a lot of uncertainty, especially given the possible impact of the coronavirus pandemic which, according to some analysts, could potentially spark a serious global recession. The UK’s exit from the European Union still leaves considerable uncertainty about the long-term relationship between the two parties as negotiations for a new trade deal have started with substantial differences of opinion in many key areas.

Software and analytics are becoming increasingly important and strategic. In three of the four markets, BACS software is growing faster in value than the total BACS market. In Germany and Spain, the growth for this segment is twice as fast. Since software is increasingly bundled with the wider service offering the actual importance of software to BACS is even greater than the crude sales “numbers” for software suggest. Increasingly, the quality and value of a BACS supplier’sproducts and services will depend on the capabilities of the software deployed to manage a building more intelligently and proactively.

While there is a move to the Cloud and more specifically to Software as a Service (SaaS), the great majority of software sold remains server-based, ranging from 75% in Spain to more than 90% in Germany, the latter figure reflecting the cautious nature of much of the German market.

Controllers, particularly DDC controllers are increasingly freely programmable, with the vast majority of all products being at least configurable. This enables controllers to be used for a wider range of applications and scenarios.

The advance of the Internet of Things is reflected in the fact that, increasingly, field devices are capable of being easily connected to the internet. This is especially true of larger and more complex devices. In all four markets, BSRIAresearch found that over 60% of Air ConditioningUnits had an inbuilt capability of being connected to the internet. However, this capability was currently being used only in a minority of cases where there was a direct benefit in connecting to the net.